April ShakespeareCAT: Hamlet

Welcome to Hamlet, a revenge tragedy that suggests numerous reading possibilities. Here is a small selection.

Revenge Tragedies

The Revenger's Tragedy
The Spanish Tragedy
The Duchess of Malfi

Murder, Ghosts and Madness

The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Eyes by Edith Wharton

Corruption

Animal Farm by George Orwell
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

Retellings and Spin-Offs

Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde
Hamlet, Revenge! by Michael Innes
Ophelia by Lisa Klein
The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie
The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

Happy reading!

ShakespeareCAT Wiki

Ooooo, I will definitely do a re-read of Hamlet. It's been about 20 years since I last read it.

>1 pamelad: Ooh, The Raven Tower is on its way to me from the library. Perfect timing!

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Play is probably my fav take on Hamlet

I will probably read The Murder of Twelve which is a Murder She Wrote novel.

I'm planning on a reread of Hamlet and then finally getting to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

It does help to have reviewed the play. Oh it is so marvelous (National Theatre Live had Daniell radclig and Joshua McGuire playing the leads, Marvlous

I plan to read or listen to Hamlet.

I'm hoping to read Hamnet, if it's still available at my local library when I'm ready to check it out.

some how I mangaged to link to the old thread of this theme from last year, and noticed Sprial Sheeps post about 'how to avoid tragedy' by David Henry Williams. Havent heard from SS since June, and miss her partcipation here. So this mention was somewhat a gift from her and made me smie

Having read a play the week before this challenge officially commenced, I also managed to read a play the week after this challenge officially ended, by an author who has written several re-visited Shakespeare plays including: Shylock's Revenge; Iago, the Villain of Venice; Lear's Fool; and The Tragedy of Lady MacBeth.

I read How to Avoid a Tragedy, by David Henry Wilson (yes, also a children's author), 2003, which is a short play script rewriting four Shakespearian tragedies to happy endings: The Moor the Merrier; Entente Cordelia; and Hamlet and Macbeth, All Hale. A couple of laughs, a couple of groans, and some shenanigans exiting stage alright. I'm guessing this play might have been written to help teach students about how theatre works.

Quote

"But if our words and actions caused offence,
We beg to plead the case for the defence:
By changing these existing tragic courses,
We do but what the Bard did with his sources."

Thanks SS whereever you are, hope you are well

A bit early with my revenge book for April.

Rizzio by Denise Mina fitted the category well.

We are all familiar with snippets of Mary Queen of Scots history, but Mina fills in the details of the tragic night of March 9, 1566 when her private secretary David Rizzio was murdered. This riveting account is a must-read!

Five stars because I couldn't put it down and it kept me up until 3am to finish it in one sitting.

>11 VivienneR: that's going on my WL!

>12 Tess_W: For such a short book Mina managed to fill in enough to explain why, yet described the actions of one night in detail.

Just finished The Murder of Twelve in the Murder She Wrote series. This one featured both murder and revenge. It seemed a bit out of character for a "cozy" mystery, as it seemed like a horror film by the end. However, the authors were definitely channeling Dame Agatha--think of And Then There Were None.

I've finished Hamlet, Revenge by Michael Innes. Polonius is murdered during a staging of Hamlet.

I just finished A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown, a YA fantasy rooted in West African mythology that also happens to be full of ghosts, royal murders, and revenge plots.

I read Rendezvous in Black by Cornell Woolrich, which is all about revenge.

I realised somewhat late that Knots and crosses is a story of revenge, eaten very cold after fifteen years.

May thread is up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/341231

I read Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde for this one. It had a whole lot going on. Hamlet was there, time travel, many literary characters.

Over the weekend I watched In the Bleak Midwinter, a.k.a. A Midwinter's Tale, written and directed by (but not starring) Kenneth Branagh. It's a movie about a group of weirdos putting on a weird production of Hamlet, and it's very funny and charming and surprisingly heartwarming! Recommended if you can find it...I borrowed the DVD from a colleague, so I'm not sure if it's streaming anywhere.

I read Hamlet (Folger Library Edition. This was definitely not my favorite Shakespeare. It was lengthy and good did not triumph in the end.

well, no. but the writing.....My DH is like you, he hates movies or books when the main charatcer dies. So not his fav Bard play eith4r

I just got the audio version of Hamlet done by the Folger Shakespeare Library. I should finish it before the end of the month since it is 3 hours 49 minutes.

I finished Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell, an imagined account of Shakespeare's son's life and death, told mostly from the point-of-view of his wife Agnes. I really loved this beautifully written novel!

I also did a reread of Hamlet and was struck by how many common English phrases came from this book.

By the way, I was wondering if anyone else has used Shakespeare Navigators. I've done a number of rereads using this site, as I like the plentiful annotations and illustrations added by the author (the late Philip Weller, a Shakespearean scholar).

>25 mathgirl40: I didn't know this, thanks for the link!

>25 mathgirl40: I just finished Hamlet on audio and couldn't believe how many of his phrases from this one play became quotable!

Is there a May thread up yet?

ETA: Never mind. It was just buried because no one had posted in so long.